


The Living, Living Still

by JustAPassingGlance



Series: seblaine week 2015 [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine loved absolutely everything about college life, from living in the dorms to buying his books and the bookstore at the start of each semester. Sebastian was much less enthralled with collegiate life. He avoided freshman like they carried the plague and only begrudgingly set foot in the dorms. And he stoutly refused to ever, ever eat on campus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Living, Living Still

Blaine had settled into the rhythm of college with ease: the highs and lows of manic periods that settled into humdrum stretches, the balance of school-life-sleep that never quite equaled out (and later, the even more exacting balance of relationship-school-friends with sleep mostly left on the sidelines).

‘Dalton training’ he called it, and credited it for his successful adjustment. There was a definite benefit to having learned how to take care of himself mostly on his own, but still with some level of supervision, in the confines of boarding school. Unlike his freshman year roommate who, in so far as Blaine was ever able to tell, only had clean clothes in the week and a half following his trips home and existed almost exclusively on a diet of energy drinks, beef jerky, and chips.

Even if Blaine hadn’t been going to school in the greatest city in the world, he still would have been excited about all that college had to offer. He loved living in the dorms, was actively involved in hall council, and never missed a social. He loved ducking into the cafeteria to grab a quick bite to eat between classes before getting swept up in the surging sea of people rushing to their next engagement. He even loved getting his books from the bookstore at the beginning of the semester.

Sebastian was much less enthralled with collegiate life. He had foregone dorm living from the start in favor of an apartment that was definitely too small for his liking, but located only a few blocks from campus. He had gone to exactly one dorm social, which Blaine had dragged him to—a mocktail party for the Oscars where the only drinks were a vile tasting fake appletini and an equally awful “virgin amaretto sour” that still left them both shuttering whenever it was brought up.

And he stoutly refused to ever, ever eat on campus.

Unless Blaine begged hard enough.

“Please? Please can we just go to Downstein? Otherwise we’re going to spend an hour arguing over what we want. And we’re both starving.”

“We wouldn’t spend that long arguing…” Sebastian said unconvincingly.

They would and they both knew it. Even though they liked a lot of the same food, they never wanted it at the same time. When Blaine wanted Thai, Sebastian had already had it twice that week. When Sebastian was craving Indian, Blaine was more in the mood for Italian. During the busiest weeks of the semester it seemed like their longest conversations were about their food plans.

“Just tonight?” Blaine batted his eyelashes and jutted out his lower lip. “And I won’t ask you to go again for the rest of the semester. And you can have Netflix control for the rest of the week. And-”

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by Sebastian’s stomach growling embarrassingly loudly.

“Fine. But can we eat quickly? I don’t want to be,” Sebastian wrinkled his nose in distaste, “ _there_ for too long.”

Blaine dragged his index finger in an X over his heart. “I will eat as quickly as possible so you don’t have to spend longer than necessary with the riff-raff.”

Sebastian smacked an exaggerated kiss against the top of Blaine’s head. “That’s not a very nice thing to say about them. They’re only freshman.”

-

"The things I do for you, Blaine Anderson. You better love me a whole fucking lot." Sebastian moaned two hours later. He was curled on his side on Blaine's too small bed. XL twins were, he had decided, one of the crueler jokes the world had yet played on him. 

"Every inch of you, every second of every day," Blaine assured him, The wooden chair legs scraping across the floor as he turned around to face his boyfriend. "And eating with the plebeians on campus wasn't that bad." 

"It wasn’t the company that was the problem. It was the food.” He jabbed angrily at the area just below his ribs before curling back in on himself. “I can feel it trying to destroy my stomach."

"So I take it we won't be getting any homework done tonight?" 

Sebastian sniffed. "You can do whatever you want."                 

Blaine made sure to save his notes and carefully mark his page before closing his textbook. He had already read for class the next day but had wanted to get ahead on Thursday's reading since they were planning to go to a concert Wednesday night. He sighed. The best laid plans... 

"Don't be silly." He grabbed his pajamas from the dresser and changed into them before retrieving his laptop to bring to the bed. "I know we still have two seasons of..." He trailed off and squinted down at Sebastian whose brow was covered in a thin sheen of sweat.  

Blaine reached out a hand to brush the hair off Sebastian's forehead. "You're really not feeling well."

"No need to sound so surprised." He let Blaine pull his head onto his lap as he sat down. "But you feel okay?” He asked, hand clenching over his stomach.

“Fine,” Blaine said quickly. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He certainly felt better than Sebastian. And he didn’t believe that they both actually got food poisoning from Downstein’s, even as his stomach cramped uncomfortably. There was probably just some bug going around that they had been unfortunate enough to get at the same time.

Sebastian grunted in response.

“Do you need anything? I think I have some ginger tea. Or water?” Blaine made to get up but was stopped by Sebastian’s hand latching onto his wrist.

“’M fine. Just wanna sleep.”

“Okay. Just let me…” he eased his way out from underneath Sebastian. He placed his computer on his bedside table and picked a movie at random from his Netflix queue. Then he crossed the room to retrieve his garbage can. As quietly as possible he switched out the half full bag for a new one and brought it back to the bed, just in case Sebastian needed it during the middle of the night.

By the time he shut off the light, Sebastian was nearly sleep. Carefully he climbed over him and wormed his way between Sebastian and the wall.

Brushing a kiss against Sebastian’s temple he whispered, “Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“’k.” Sebastian agreed.

Blaine adjusted the pillows underneath their heads and pulled the blankets up higher around them. Mindfully of his stomach, he looped his arm over Sebastian’s waist and tucked his head under his chin.

It was fifteen minutes into worrying about Sebastian and not watching the movie that the first wave of nausea hit Blaine. He made a note to apologize to Sebastian in the morning as he stopped being able to distinguish between the waves and his every movement threatened to make him sick.

He forced himself to breath in as his stomach cramped up again.

_Four._

_Five._

_Six._

_Seven._

It did feel like something was trying to destroy his insides, like there was acid eating away at the lining of his stomach, melting everything down and setting it to boiling. He bit down on his lip to keep from crying out as a particularly severe cramp seized his insides.

He focused on his breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. He let the cycles wash over him, rode each breath as though it were a wave until it lulled him into a fitful sleep.

-

Sebastian’s entire body felt heavy, like weights had been strapped to every limb and were dragging him down. Even his tongue rested uncomfortably in his mouth.

He felt like death warmed over and then cooled down again.

His thoughts swam in circles around his head. Chased, whenever they almost came into focus, by an inexplicable and insatiable… hunger.

It took all of his concentration and will to force his eyelids open. For a long moment he stared at the ceiling. It seemed to be the middle of the night, but the room was darker than it ever got, even in the earliest hours of the morning. 

Stiffly Sebastian reached his hand out in search of Blaine’s, pulling back when it came to rest on Blaine’s body.

He couldn’t… feel it. He knew he was touching something, could fill the pressure of it beneath his fingertips but it hadn’t felt like anything. He couldn’t feel the warmth of Blaine’s skin or it’s smoothness.

He ran his hand over the blankets. He noted the way they gave beneath his touch but that was all. He couldn’t feel the wrinkles or the texture. Couldn’t tell if he was touching the sheet or the comforter.

Stumbling from the bed, he tried to gasp out Blaine’s name, but it came out as nothing more than a low moan.  He found he could hardly move, every step and movement coming out as a jerk. He fumbled for the light and on his fourth attempt, managed to flick it on.

Foggily he noticed that his skin had a greenish-purpled tinge to it. Vaguely he remembered it wasn’t supposed to look like that.

In the back corner of his mind he could feel panic set it. Once more he tried to call for Blaine, but his swollen tongue couldn’t fit around the words.

He lumbered back to the bed and clambered onto it with his uncooperative limbs. Clumsily he laid his hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder and gave it a light shake.

Blaine didn’t wake. Even when Sebastian tried shaking harder. His skin was deathly pale and Sebastian knew, even without being able to feel it, that it would be cool.

With numbed fingers, Sebastian searched out Blaine’s pulse. He clutched at Blaine’s wrist and hoped that he would be able to feel the pressure of a steady rise and fall.

Nothing.

He could feel the panic taking a firmer hold of its little niche, scrabbling against the fog and establishing its own domain.

And then Blaine’s chest rose. It stayed expanded for almost too long before falling again. What felt like an age passed before Sebastian noticed it rising again.

Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief. Or he would have, if he had been breathing. It was only then that he noticed that his heart, which should have been pounding its way out of his chest, wasn’t even beating.

-

It had happened suddenly, silently. Not like it should have. Not leaving a trail of terror and fear in its wake. Not transmitted by bite or touch. 

Not at first. 

No one knew what the cause was. If it was an airborne pathogen, innocuously breathed in as they went about their day, as they said hello to their classmates, kissed each other, and waited in line. Or something in the food that was wolfed down by over-worked students. Devoured more for fuel than out of actual enjoyment.

Whatever it was, it rotted them from the inside out. The process hastened when they went to sleep, making them wake up... different. If they woke up at all. 

A campus-wide epidemic, the news called it as they evacuated the entire island of Manhattan and forced those who might have been exposed into quarantine. (Not enough, as it turned out. Measures taken, as always too slowly and not soon enough. Unsurprising, considering.) 

Over a thousand students that just…

didn't get up one day.

Or the next.

The rest of the world alerted by the scent of putrefying flesh that wafted out of partially open windows in the warm spring air.

A similar case had been reported in China a few months before. Another in a remote town in Argentina. Everyone in both the towns had been infected and died, as had the doctors and scientists who had tried to determine the cause.

But they hadn’t stayed dead.

The moment the word got out (a sophomore who had been staying at her boyfriend’s overnight and had come back to find her roommate, body contorted from spasms even as it entered a stage akin to rigor mortis) the doors were barricaded shut by armed teams in biohazard suits.

No one in. No one out. 

Not the one freshman girl who pounded at the door—eyes wide in terror, face stark white, and voice changing from a shriek to a whimper—as they sealed it up.

Not the flock of parents who converged on the dorms before the state of emergency was declared and evacuations had begun.

Leave them dead and rotting to cannibalize themselves. Argentina had proved that, once they ran out of others to eat, they would starve. It would take longer than if they were still human, but eventually they would.

-

The entire door quaked on its hinges as something slammed against it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Every few hours something- someone- new would try to break in. After the wood had started to splinter in the first few attempts, he had dragged the desk and chair in front of it.

The door shook again and he roared a wordless warning in response.

Whoever it was stopped their assault and dragged themselves back up the hall.

Since he had woke up, he had ventured outside the room only once, in search of something he could feed to Blaine. He had retreated back to the dorm when the sounds of an unending scream filled the hall. Whoever it was (a girl by the sounds) barely drew breath as her shriek went from one of terror to horrified agony.

Sebastian could smell it. Even though it was happening on another floor. He could smell the blood and the meat and he craved it. He was half way to the stairs before he remembered that Blaine was alone, unconscious, and unprotected in his room.

Half-maddened by hunger, Sebastian turned around.

He had barricaded the door shortly after.

-

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything. He felt confused and delirious, like he had just woken up with a fever even though he hadn’t slept in days. Everything about the room felt foreign to him, like he was seeing it for the first time. But somehow it also felt familiar, like he had seen it all a million times before.

He wasn’t anything. At least not anything recognizable.

He was hunger. An insatiable, debilitating hunger that became the focus of his world. He needed to eat. Needed life to sustain his own lack-of-living.

He sat in the corner of the room and fought against it. Fought against the tempting smell of flesh, the urge to go hunt his prey.

He didn’t know anything anymore, but he knew he couldn’t leave.            

 _Blaine_.

If he focused hard enough, Sebastian could follow Blaine’s name through his thoughts. Could trace it back and forward to _something_ , connect it to the thing lying, still unconscious, on the bed.

Every few hours he would feed it ice chips. He couldn’t remember why anymore, but it was an essential task. Carefully he would wrap his hands in a towel (not to protect himself from the cold, but to protect it from him. He was dangerous, somehow. The blackened molt of his skin contrasted with its paleness and he knew the two shouldn’t come in contact.) before opening the mini-fridge and taking out the ice chips. Awkwardly he fed them to it, its mouth being as uncooperative as his hands.

The longer he stood by it, the more it solidified itself into _Blaine_. Stopped being an it and became a him. Memories tickled the back recesses of Sebastian’s mind. Not enough to come to the surface but enough to, somewhere within him, remember. (Remember Blaine. Remember himself. Remember before.)

But Sebastian couldn’t stay near him too long. Blaine didn’t quite smell like flesh but it was close. Too long at the bedside and his concentration was broken and the hunger came swimming back, devouring his threads of focus, and yelling that this, _this_ , was prey. Not fun to hunt, but enough.

He forced himself away then. Covered it- _Blaine_ \- in a blanket (to keep it warm? To hide the scent? He couldn’t remember again. Just another essential step).

He went back to his corner. Gave up the echoes of coherent thought to become a shell again.

-

“Waaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaa’e uuu’,” Sebastian growled, the words falling thick and slow from his lips. “Blaaaaaaaai’e.” He gave Blaine’s body another pointless shake.

Blaine hadn’t woke up. Wasn’t going to wake up. Even though he kept drawing breath he was as dead as Sebastian was.  Just in a different way. Alive, but still dead.

And Sebastian was dead but still alive.

Anger spiked through him.

He shook Blaine harder. He was going to wake up. Blaine couldn’t just leave him like that. Like nothing. Not even leaving, because he wasn’t really gone. He was still there, still breathing, heart still beating. Somewhere inside he had to still be Blaine.

Sebastian needed Blaine. Needed him to wake up. Needed him to be there, to be more than nothing. Needed him to quiet the hunger within him and bring him back to himself.

He just needed Blaine to be _something._

Sebastian kept shaking him, harder and harder. It would have to wake him up. No matter how the deep the sleep, no one could keep sleeping through that.

The anger continued to mount inside of him until it was all he could feel. It short-circuited every nerve in his body until it was all consuming. It boiled through him, blackening his remaining sense.

His vision tunneled.

All he could feel was Blaine’s body as he shook it back and forth, more and more vigorously. Blaine’s life-filled body might as well have been life-less as it was flung, like a rag doll, about the bed.

He seethed and raged, his anger spilling out and over but not into Blaine’s body, which just continued to flop back and forth. Not sparking it back to living by sheer force of will and desperation.

He roared in frustration and finally gave into the inhuman darkness of his anger. 

-

“Blaine?” Sebastian sat bolt upright, hands groping around the bed to reassure himself as to where he was, who he was with. “Blaine?”

Immediately Blaine’s arms were around him. “What’s the matter?” Blaine’s voice was sleep-laden but blissfully, reassuringly _there_. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah…” Sebastian laid back down, wrapping himself around Blaine’s body, feeling the way Blaine’s heart beat against his rib cage and counting every single beat. “I just had…” He shook his head. “Weird dream.”

“Want to talk about it?” Blaine’s hand was running soothingly up and down his spine, tracing over the bumps and kneading out the tension.

Sebastian breathed out and then in and then out again. “No. Just…” he held Blaine a little tighter.

“Shh,” Blaine coaxed, feeling the way he tensed up. “It was just a dream. Go back to sleep.”

Sebastian closed his eyes again. “You’ll be here?” He mumbled against Blaine’s chest. “When I wake up?”

Blaine chuckled, warm and affectionate. “Where else would I be?”

-

Sebastian forced his eyes open again. He felt more like himself. Still not himself, but he could recognize within himself the parts that were once Sebastian. The hunger that had consumed him before had abated and he could feel life flowing through him, bringing him closer to feeling human.

The last thing he could clearly remember was feeling sick after dinner. Weird dreams had followed. (Dream? Dreams. His mind was still too foggy to separate one from the other, but both felt equally foreign to him. In one he was a monster, in the other awakening to reality. Both felt equally distant and surreal.)

He tried to draw a breath, only to realize that he wasn’t breathing.

Not all a dream then. He closed his eyes against the horror of reality.

He clenched his hands together and couldn’t feel anything but the pressure of his palms against each other. That and…

There was something slippery coating his fingers, something that squelched and bubbled as he squeezed them together.

It was slippery now but drying quickly. Drying into iron flakes that he couldn’t see in the dark but he could smell.

The slippery wetness was all over the bed. Soaking through his clothing and the sheets. Trailing from his hands, up his arms, even to his face.

The room felt too still.

“Blaainee?” His tongue felt less foreign in his mouth and moved with greater ease.

But even as he said it he _knew._ “Blaine?” He said again, more frantically. The panic was back, no longer scrabbling but clawing its way to the forefront of his mind.

His fingers slipped and skidded their way through the bloodied mess, up from Blaine’s hips to his torso and his neck. Sliding more and more the further up they went.

 “BLAINE?”

 

 


End file.
